I still remember the beginning days of building this blog. I worked tirelessly for 60 to 80 hours every single week without fail. In the beginning, I saw a trickle of traffic that amounted to maybe 20 to 30 visitors per day. That number multiplied by about a 100 after approximately a year and a half or so of grueling hard work. And since then, it has climbed significantly for one reason and one reason only: consistency.

That means that every goal, task and item in your blog action plan should be around these 4 areas in order to make money with your blog. Ideally, you will address each bucket every month, meaning that you set specific goals that you plan to achieve for each focus area, each month (blog, traffic, subscribers, product). This way you’ll be covering all bases and moving them all forward.

After having this realization, I started going out and pitching other similar (non-competitive) startups and online brands that clearly needed more business-related content for their blogs... and over the course of the next year, I continued to slowly double the prices I'd charge per article. I'd add new "extras" as time went on and I built a larger community & brand for myself too—always experimenting with my offer to see what clients would pay more for.
If you start constructing your blog through wordpress.COM, you will likely spend a lot of time picking a theme and starting to write and organize your posts, only to discover that wordpress.COM does NOT support any ways to monetize your site. You can NOT place any adds on a wordpress.COM hosted site. Of course, that defeats the whole purpose of having a "blog for profit".

Some blogs are focused on getting paid to provide links to news articles, company stores, or other third party websites. The most financially successful of these range from the Drudge, a blog composed almost entirely of conservative-leaning news links, to Smashing Magazine, a site that provides advice and product reviews to help software developers.[5][6]

Take good pictures. Some of the options below don’t require you to actually take the picture and sell the product, but for the ones that do, make sure you take a clear picture that makes your product stand out from the others. If you’re going to be taking a lot of pictures, set up a small “studio-like” area in your home with a backdrop and proper lighting to really make your pictures come across as professional. And of course, you’ll want a good camera too.
The first thing your blog’s front end needs is a face (design and layout). You want to create an environment that is both eye-catching and practical. In the long run, you want your visitors to easily find information on your site. You don’t want visitors to be discouraged by the colors you choose or the non-intuitive and unpractical way in which information is displayed. Your design can cause instant distrust of your blog or instant acceptance.
The problem is that in order to build your audience and increase the size of your platform, you need visibility. But in order to be visible, you need great content. However, if people can’t discover your great content, how are you supposed to build your audience? If you know anything about SEO, then you know that it’s the proverbial Catch-22 at the outset.
When anyone asks me about starting a professional money making blog I always recommend them to use self hosted WordPress as it’s the best platform for bloggers. I always recommend to new bloggers to use BlueHost to host their new blogs. You can get BlueHost’s high quality hosting for $2.95 per month (36 months sign up) Use this link to get a free domain name with your hosting.
Create a location-independent lifestyle – Blogs are great for working while traveling and producing an income no matter where you might be living. In a recent article that I wrote for Forbes, I talked about how Nomadic Matt, one of the most popular travel bloggers, started his blog so that he could enjoy traveling the world and not be tied to a 9-to-5 desk job.
Facebook – Depending on your niche you can expect to pay about $1 per click to your blog, but there are many variables that can influence how much you will pay. Depending on the nature of your business this can provide some excellent ROI in terms of initial sales, but the main focus of this ad campaign is to get people to your blog. Wow them with your content and get them to opt-in to your email list for more updates.
Use a system like W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache and turn on browser caching to ensure that you speed up the delivery of your webpages. In the beginning, this might not seem as important. But as you grow and your traffic increases to thousands of visitors per day, this will be critical. Use Google's Page Speed Insights to test things before and after the installation.

The reasoning behind this is simple. If your aren’t earning money, you’re not truly “in business.” Your blog is merely a hobby you do in your spare time. On the other hand, how much revenue you need to earn to be considered a success depends on the amount of money you need to survive and the expenses your business has. Basically, as long as you still have money leftover after paying your personal and business bills, you’re golden.

This is a big reason why I recommend building your blog with a platform that allows you to build a proper, fully-fledged website rather than a blog with a few simple pages. Platforms like WordPress.org allow you to build beautiful pages designed to captivate and convert your readers as they scroll through them. You can do this with page builders, email marketing plugins, plugins that help you manage and cloak affiliate links, and more.
After getting some much needed guidance from a prolific internet entrepreneur, I shifted my focus. I released my first digital product in September last year in the way of an eBook, then a month ago I opened the doors to my own training course (that was scary!) and as you would expect I’ve already surpassed the total earnings of those first 18 months by a good margin.
Keep it simple: At the end of the day, the goal of starting a blog is to share content that can be easily consumed (read, watched, experienced). And unfortunately, a lot of fancy blog themes get in the way of that. Don’t get too drawn in by crazy looking themes that compromise on legibility and usability. If a theme looks good, but doesn’t help you share your thoughts and engage with readers, it’s not a good theme.
Hey Alex & Lauren! All this information has been so usefull and so easy to understand, i am very grateful. But i have a query, i live in a country in South America (Chile) where spanish is the main language, therefore i don`t know if its best to create my blog in spanish (which is easier for me because i have much more vocabulary and grammer skills) or go with the world wilde language English. Hoping to hear from you guys, thanks!
I went to hostgator as per your instruction. Now I am confused as to whats the difference between “Register a new domain”and Ï already own this domain”? When I try to register myname.com in the register a new domain section it just says unavailable whereas its available in the I already own this domain section. So do I need to buy a new domain name separately before proceeding to hostgator or hosting and domain name come together? Ah I am really confused, please help!
Transparency. Being transparent is different from being honest. You needn’t share every detail about your life just for the sake of being honest. Always be honest, and be transparent when it adds value to what you’re writing. (Because everything we write must serve the greater good, you won’t ever see pictures of us using the restroom—that’s just not relevant.)
Making money through blogging requires a carefully thought out topic. If you have an existing blog with a small audience, be honest when considering whether the topic has broad appeal that isn't already covered by other established bloggers. If it does, great! Otherwise, there's nothing wrong with starting a second blog that will be more successful in attracting an audience, marketing itself, and making money through a variety of methods described below.
Hi Sydney! Not many blogs pay for articles and guest posts, but I think what you’d be interested in is freelancing writing. Creating content for other websites is definitely an option if you want the flexibility to work from home writing. You can check out my interview with Gina about how to get started freelance writing. I think it just comes down to what you’re more interested in doing. Do you want to create a blog that you are able to share more of your story and build relationships with readers? Or do you just want to straight up write articles that fill another site’s requirements? I hope you find the perfect situation for you!
Hello; I thought that points 12 and 13 were the most important. one agrees with what my dad always told me which is that it isn’t what you gross its what you keep. And the other making the point that we need to focus more on those people and companies we already know. I was reminded of this while trying to book venues for an upcoming trip to shoot youtube episodes about theme parks for my amusement industry based channel. the only ones that said yes were the ones i had work with on buying or selling amusement equipment. and you are so right about your story because I am currently struggling with the subject of my blog. the most popular posts are those dealing with my weight loss or my managing a business as a blind person. these get views shares and comments but they don’t necessarily sell anything. they may even be confusing some who follow or thought about following the blog. I don’t want to manage two blogs but i can see how it might be the right thing to do. I also have a similar concern about my other efforts social media, podcasting, youtube videos, google hangouts, etc. I look forward to your thoughts. Thanks for this amazingly detailed and comprehensive post. Take care, max
“I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a ‘blogging for profit’ book junkie. I’ve read LOTS of them! However, most of them it’s just the same thing over and over. When I first heard about this book my first thought was ‘should I bother? There’s never anything new anymore’. I was so wrong – Ruth’s writing style is so nicely organized, and easy to read, as if you were sitting there chatting with an old friend. Her book goes into amazing-yet-easy-to-understand details on a ton of methods for making money blogging – but that’s after about half the book giving you advice and steps on actually GETTING to the point where you could make money, by growing your blog and being YOUR type of awesome.
However, building a platform isn’t just about that. Building a platform involves ensuring that you’re always doing the most amount of work for the least initial return. Sound crazy? Okay, it might be a little bit crazy. But it’s true. You have to go out of your way for your readers. Because, believe me, they pay attention and remember what you do for them.

He is the co-founder of Neil Patel Digital. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies. Neil is a New York Times bestselling author and was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations.